[Note: for this online edition I have moved the Table of Contents tothe beginning of the text. ] THE ENJOYMENT OF ART BY CARLETON NOYES BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANYThe Riverside Press, Cambridge1903 COPYRIGHT, 1903, BY CARLETON NOYESALL RIGHTS RESERVED_Published, March, 1903_ ToROBERT HENRIANDVAN D. PERRINE This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look'd at the crowded heaven, And I said to my spirit _When we become the enfolders of those orbs, and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them, shall we be fill'd and satisfied then?_And my spirit said _No, we but level that lift to pass and continue beyond. _ WALT WHITMAN CONTENTS PrefaceI. The Picture and the Man iII. The Work of Art as Symbol 19III. The Work of Art as Beautiful 41IV. Art and Appreciation 67V. The Artist 86 PREFACE The following pages are the answer to questions which a young manasked himself when, fresh from the university, he found himselfadrift in the great galleries of Europe. As he stood helpless andconfused in the presence of the visible expressions of the spirit ofman in so many ages and so many lands, one question recurredinsistently: _Why_ are these pictures? What is the meaning of allthis striving after expression? What was the aim of these men whohave left their record here? What was their moving impulse? Why, why does the human spirit seek to manifest itself in forms which wecall beautiful? He turned to histories of art and to biographies of artists, but hefound no answer! to the "Why?" The philosophers with theirtheories of aesthetics helped him little to understand the dignity andforce of this portrait or the beauty of that landscape. In theconversation of his artist friends there was no enlightenment, forthey talked about "values" and "planes of modeling" and themysteries of "tone. " At last he turned in upon himself: What doesthis canvas mean to me? And here he found his answer. This workof art is the revelation to me of a fuller beauty, a deeper harmony, than I have ever seen or felt. The artist is he who has experiencedthis new wonder in nature and who wants to communicate his joy, inconcrete forms, to his fellow men. The purpose of this book is to set forth in simple, untechnicalfashion the nature and the meaning of a work of art. Although theillustrations of the underlying principles are drawn mainly frompictures, yet the conclusions apply equally to books and to music. Itis true that the manifestations of the art-impulse are innumerable, embracing not only painting, sculpture, literature, music, andarchitecture, but also the handiwork of the craftsman in thedesigning of a rug or in the fashioning of a cup or a candlestick; it istrue that each art has its special province and function, and that eachis peculiarly adapted to the expression of a certain order of emotionor idea, and that the distinctions between one art and another are notto be inconsiderately swept aside or obscured. Yet art is one. It ispossible, without confusing the individual characteristics essential toeach, to discuss these principles under the comprehensive rubric ofArt. The attempt is made here to reduce the supposed mysteries of artdiscussion to the basis of practical, every-day intelligence andcommon sense. What the ordinary man who feels himself in anyway attracted; towards art needs is not more and constantly morepictures to look at, not added lore about them, not further knowledgeof the men and the times that have produced them; but rather whathe needs is some understanding of what the artist has aimed toexpress, and, as reinforcing that understanding, the capacity rightlyto appreciate and enjoy. It is hoped that in this book the artist may find expressed withsimplicity and justice his own highest aims; and that the appreciatorand the layman may gain some insight into the meaning of artexpression, and that they may be helped a little on their way to theenjoyment of art. HARVARD COLLEGE, _December tenth, 1902. _ I THE PICTURE AND THE MAN At any exhibition of paintings, more particularly at some publicgallery or museum, one can hardly fail to reflect that an interest inpictures is unmistakably widespread. People are there inconsiderable numbers, and what is more striking, they seem torepresent every station and walk in life. It is evident that pictures, asexhibited to the public, are not the cult of an initiated few; theirappeal is manifestly to no one class; and this popular interest is asgenuine as it is extended. Thus reflectively scanning the crowd, the observer asks himself:What has attracted these numbers to that which might be supposednot to be understood of the many? And what are the pictures that ingeneral draw the popular attention? A few persons have of course drifted into the exhibition out ofcuriosity or from lack of something better to do. So much is evidentat once, for these file past the walls listlessly, seldom stopping, andthen but to glance at those pictures which are most obviously likethe familiar object they pretend to represent, --such as the bowl offlowers which the beholder can almost smell, the theatre-checks andfive-dollar note pasted on a wall which tempt him to finger them, orthe panel of game birds which puzzles him to determine whether thebirds are real or not. These visitors, however, are not the mostnumerous. With the great majority it is not enough that the picturebe a clever piece of imitation or illusion: transferring their interestfrom the mere execution, they demand further that the subjectsrepresented shall be pleasing. The crowd pause before a sunnylandscape, with cows standing by the shaded pool; they gather aboutthe brilliant portrait of a woman splendidly arrayed, --a favoriteactress or a social celebrity; they linger before a group of childrenwading in a brook, or a dog crouching mournfully by an emptycradle. At length, with an approving and sympathetic word ofcomment, they pass on to the next pleasing picture. Some canvases, not the most popular ones, are yet not without their interest for a few;these visitors are taking things a little more seriously; they do not tryto see every picture, they do not hurry; they seem to be consideringthe canvas immediately before them with concentrated attention. No one of all these people is insensible to the appeal of thepicturesque: their presence at the exhibition is evidence of that. Inlife they like to see a bowl of flowers, a sunny landscape, a beautifulwoman in beautiful surroundings; and naturally they are interestedin that which represents and recalls the reality. At once it is plain, however, that to different individuals the various pictures appeal indifferent measure and for differing reasons. To one the very fact ofrepresentation is a mystery and fascination. To another the importantthing is the subject; the picture must represent what he likes innature or in life. To a third the subject itself is of less concern thanwhat the painter wanted to say about it: the artist saw a beautymanifested by an ugly beggar, perhaps, and he wanted to show thatbeauty to his fellows, who could not perceive it for themselves. The special interest in pictures of each of these three men is notwithout its warrant in experience. What man is wholly indifferent tothe display of human skill? Who is there without his store ofpleasurable associations, who is not stirred by any call which rousesthem into play? What lover of beauty is not ever awake to therevelation of new beauty? Indeed, upon these three principlestogether, though in varying proportion, depends the full significanceof a great work of art. As the lover of pictures looks back over the period of his consciousinterest in exhibitions and galleries, it is not improbable that hisearliest memories attach themselves to those paintings which mostclosely resembled the object represented. He remembers the greatwonder which he felt that a man with mere paint and canvas couldso reproduce the reality of nature. So it is that those paintings whichare perhaps the first to attract the man who feels an interest inpictures awakening are such as display most obviously the painter'sskill. Whatever the subject imitated, the fascination remains; thatsuch illusion is possible at all is the mystery and the delight. But as his interest in pictures grows with indulgence, as hisexperience widens, the beholder becomes gradually aware that he ismaking a larger demand. After the first shock of pleasurable surpriseis worn away, he finds that the repeated exhibition of the painter'sdexterity ceases to satisfy him; these clever pieces of deceptionmanifest a wearying sameness, after all; and the beholder beginsnow to look for something more than mere expertness. Thinking onhis experience, he concludes that the subjects which can be imitateddeceptively are limited in range and interest; he has a vague, disquieting sense that somehow these pictures do not mean anything. Yet he is puzzled. Art aims to represent, he tells himself, and itshould follow that the best art is that which represents most closelyand exactly. He recalls, perhaps, the legend of the two Greekpainters, one with his picture of the fruit which the birds flew downto peck at, the other with his painting of a veil which deceived hisvery rival. The imitative or "illusionist" picture pleads its case mostplausibly. A further experience of such pictures, however, fails tobring the beholder beyond his simple admiration of the painter's skill;and that skill, he comes gradually to realize, does not differessentially from the adroitness of the juggler who keeps a billiardball, a chair, and a silk handkerchief rotating from hand to hand. Conscious, then, of a new demand, of an added interest to besatisfied, the amateur of pictures turns from the imitative canvas tothose paintings which appeal more widely to his familiar experience. Justly, he does not here forgo altogether his delight in the painter'scunning of hand, only he requires further that the subjectsrepresented shall be pleasing. It must be a subject whose meaning hecan recognize at once: a handsome or a strong portrait, a familiarlandscape, some little incident which tells its own story. Thespectator is now attracted by those pictures which rouse a train ofagreeable associations. He stops before a canvas representing a bitof rocky coast, with the ocean tumbling in exhilaratingly. Herecognizes the subject and finds it pleasing; then he wonders wherethe picture was painted. Turning to his catalogue, he reads: "37. Onthe Coast of Maine. " "Oh, yes, " he says to himself, "I was on thecoast of Maine last summer, and I remember what a glorious time Ihad sitting on the rocks of an afternoon, with some book or otherwhich the ocean was too fine to let me read. I like that picture. " Ifthe title had read "Massachusetts Coast, " it is to be feared he wouldnot have liked the canvas quite so well. The next picture which henotices shows, perhaps, a stately woman sumptuously attired. It iswith a slight shock of disappointment that the visitor finds recordedin his catalogue: "41. Portrait of a Lady. " He could see that much forhimself. He hoped it was going to be the painter's mother orsomebody's wife, --a person he ought to know about. But the pictureswhich appeal to him most surely are those which tell some littlestory, --"The Lovers, " "The Boy leaving Home, " "The Wreck. " Herethe subject, touching some one of the big human emotions, to whichno man is wholly insensible, calls out the response of immediateinterest and sympathy. It is something which he can understand. At length there comes a day when the visitor stops before alandscape which seems to him more beautiful than anything he hasever seen in nature; or some portrait discloses a strength of characteror radiates a charm of personality which he has seldom met with inlife. Whence comes this beauty, this strength, this graciousness? Canit be that the painter has seen a new wonder in nature, a newsignificance in human life? The spectator's previous experience ofpictures has familiarized him in some measure with the means ofexpression which the painter employs. More sensitive now to theappeal of color and form, he sees that what the artist cares to presenton his canvas is just his peculiar sense of the beauty in the world, abeauty that is best symbolized and made manifest through themedium of color and form. Before he understood this eloquentlanguage which the painter speaks, he misinterpreted those pictureswhose significance he mistook to be literary and not pictorial. Heearly liked the narrative picture because here was a subject he couldunderstand; he could rephrase it in his own terms, he could retell thestory to himself in words. Now words are the means of expression ofevery-day life. Because of this fact, the art which employs words asits medium is the art which comes nearest to being universallyunderstood, namely, literature. The other arts use each a mediumwhich it requires a special training to understand. Without somesense of the expressiveness of color, line, form, and sounds, --a sensewhich can be cultivated, --one is necessarily unable to grasp the fulland true meaning of picture, statue, or musical composition. Onemust realize further that the artist thinks and feels in his peculiarmedium; his special meaning is conceived and expressed in color orform or sound. The task of the appreciator, correspondingly, is toreceive the artist's message in the same terms in which it wasconceived. The tendency is inevitable, however, to translate themeaning of the work into words, the terms in which men commonlyphrase their experience. A parallel tendency is manifest in one'sefforts to learn a foreign language. The English student of French atfirst thinks in English and laboriously translates phrase for phraseinto French; and in hearing or reading the foreign language, hetranslates the original, word for word, into his native tongue beforehe can understand its sense: he has mastered the language only whenhe has reached that point where English is no longer present to hisconsciousness: he thinks in French and understands in French. Similarly, to translate the message of any art into terms that areforeign to it, to phrase the meaning of music or painting, forexample, in words, is to fail of its essential, true significance. Theimport of music is musical; the meaning of pictures is not literarybut pictorial. In the understanding of this truth, then, the spectatorpenetrates to the artist's real intention; and he becomes aware thatwhen he used the picture as the peg whereon to hang his ownreflections and ideas, he missed the meaning of the artist's work. "AsI look at this canvas, " he tells himself, "it is not what I know of thecoast of Maine that is of concern, but what the painter has seen andfelt of its beauty and wants to reveal to me. " Able at last to interpretthe painter's medium, the appreciator comes to seek in pictures notprimarily an exhibition of the craftsman's skill, not even a recall ofhis own pleasurable experiences, but rather, beyond all this, a fullervisible revelation of beauty. The essential significance of art, that art is revelation, is illustratednot only by painting but by the other arts as well. In music, to takebut a single example, are present the same elements that constitutethe appeal of pictures, --skill in the rendering, a certaincorrespondence with experience, and the power of imaginativeinterpretation of the facts of life. The music-hall performer whowins the loudest and heartiest applause is he who does the greatestnumber of pyrotechnic, wonderful things on the piano, or holds ahigh note on the cornet for the longest time. His success, as with thepainter whose aim is to create illusion, rests upon men's instinctiveadmiration for the exhibition of skill. Again, as the imitative pictureinvolves not only the display of dexterity, but also likeness to thething represented and the consequent possibility of recognizing itimmediately, so in the domain of music there is an order ofcomposition which seems to aim at imitation, --the so-called"descriptive" music. A popular audience is delighted with the "Cats'Serenade, " executed on the violins with overwhelming likeness tothe reality, or with, the "Day in the Country, " in which the sun risesin the high notes, cocks crow, horses rattle down the road, merrymakers frolic on the green, clouds come up in the horns, lightning plays in the violins, thunder crashes in the drums andcymbals, the merrymakers scatter in the whole orchestra, the stormpasses diminuendo, and in the muted violins the full moon risesserenely into a twilight sky. Here the intention is easily understood;the layman cannot fail to recognize what the composer wanted tosay. And as in the case of pictures which interest the beholderbecause he can translate their subject into the terms which are hisown medium of expression, that is, words, so with descriptive music, broadly speaking, the interest and significance is literary and notmusical. Still another parallel is presented. Just as those pictures arepopular whose subjects lie within the range of familiar experience, such as cows by the shaded pool, or children playing, or whosesubjects touch the feelings; so, that music is popular which isphrased in obvious and familiar rhythms such as the march and thewaltz, or which appeals readily and unmistakably to sentiment andemotion. It is after the lover of music has traversed these passages ofmusical expression and has proved their imitations that he comes toseek in music new ranges of experience, unguessed-at possibilitiesof feeling, which the composer has himself sounded and which hewould communicate to others. He is truly the artist only as he leadshis auditors into regions of beautiful living which they alone and ofthemselves had not penetrated. For it is then that his work reveals. Only such pictures, too, will have a vital meaning as reveal. Theimitative and the iterative alike, that which adds nothing to theobject and that which adds nothing to the experience of the beholder, though once pleasing, now fail to satisfy. The appreciator calls forsomething fuller. He wants to pass beyond the object, beyond hisexperience of it, into the realm of illumination whither the true artistwould lead him. The development of appreciation, as the amateurhas come to realize in his own person, is only the enlargement ofdemand. The appreciator requires ever fresh revelations of beauty. He discovers, too, that in practice the tendency of his development isin the direction of exclusion. As he goes on, he cares for fewer andfewer things, because those works which can minister to hisever-expanding desire of beauty must needs be less numerous. But thesemake up in largeness of utterance, in the intensity of their message, what they lack in numbers. Nor does this outcome make against afancied catholicity of taste. The true appreciator still sees in hisearlier loves something that is good, and he values the good themore justly that he sees it now in its right relation and apprehends itsreal significance. As each in its turn led him to seek further, eachbecame an instrument in his development. For himself he has needof them no longer. But far from contemning them, he is rightlygrateful for the solace they have afforded, as by them he has madehis way up into the fuller meaning of art. II THE WORK OF ART AS SYMBOL In the experience of the man who feels himself attracted to picturesand who studies them intelligently and with sympathy, there comesa day when suddenly a canvas reveals to him a new beauty in natureor in life. Much seeing and much thinking, much bewilderment andsome disappointment, have taught him that in the appreciation ofpictures the question at issue is not, how cleverly has the painterimitated his object, is not, how suggestive is the subject of pleasingassociations; he need simply ask himself, "What has the artistconceived or felt in the presence of this landscape, this arrangementof line and color, this human face, that I have not seen and felt, andthat he wants to communicate to me?" The incident of the single canvas, which by its illuminatingrevealment first discloses to the observer the true significance ofpictures, is typical of the whole scope of art. The mission of art is toreveal. It is the prophet's message to his fellow men, the apocalypseof the seer. The artist is he to whom is vouchsafed a specialapprehension of beauty. He has the eye to see, the temperament tofeel, the imagination to interpret; it is by virtue of these capacities, this high, transfiguring vision, that he is an artist; and his skill ofhand, his equipment with the means of expression, is incidental tothe great fact that he has somewhat to express that the common manhas not. To his work, the manifestation of his spirit in material form, his perception made sensible, is accorded the name of art. Art is expression. It is not a display of skill; it is not the reproductionof external forms or appearances; it does not even, as some say, exist for itself: it is a message, a means. To cry "Art for Art's sake!"is to converse with the echo. Such a definition but moves in a circle, and doubles upon itself. No; art is for the artist's sake. The artist isthe agent or human instrument whereby the supreme harmony, which is beauty, is manifested to men. Art is the medium by whichthe artist communicates himself to his fellows; and the individualwork is the expression of what the artist felt or thought, as at themoment some new aspect of the universal harmony was revealed tohis apprehension. Art is emotion objectified, but the object issubordinated to the emotion as means is to an end. The materialresult is not the final significance, but what of spiritual meaning orbeauty the artist desired to convey. Not what is painted, as thelayman thinks, not how it is painted, as the technician considers, butwhy did the artist paint it, is the question which sums up the truthabout art. The appreciator need simply ask, What is the beauty, whatthe idea, which the artist is striving to reveal by these symbols ofcolor and form? He understands that the import of the work is the_idea, _ and that the work itself is beautiful because it symbolizes abeautiful idea; its significance is spiritual. The function of art, then, is through the medium of concrete, material symbols to reveal tomen whatever of beauty has been disclosed to the artist's morepenetrating vision. In order to seize the real meaning of art it is necessary to strip theword beauty of all the wrappings of customary associations and theaccretions of tradition and habit. As the word is current in ordinaryparlance, the attribute of beauty is ascribed to that which is pleasing, pretty, graceful, comely; in fine, to that which is purely agreeable. But surely such is not the beauty which Rembrandt saw in the filthy, loathsome beggar. To Rembrandt the beggar was expressive of someforce or manifestation of the supreme universal life, wherein allthings work together to a perfect harmony. Beauty is the essentialquality belonging to energy, character, significance. A merelyagreeable object is not beautiful unless it is expressive of a meaning;whatever, on the other hand, is expressive of a meaning, howevershocking it may be in itself, however much it may fail to conform toconventional standards, is beautiful. Beauty does not reside in theobject. No; it is the artist's sense of the great meaning of things; andin proportion as he finds that meaning--the qualities of energy, force, aspiration, life--manifest and expressed in objects do those objectsbecome beautiful. Such was the conception of beauty Keats hadwhen he wrote in a letter: "What the Imagination seizes as Beautymust be Truth--whether it existed before or not, --for I have the sameidea of all our passions as of Love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty. " And similarly; "I can never feel certainof any truth, but from a clear perception of its Beauty. " It his versehe sings:-- "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty, '--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. " When it is said here, then, that the artist sees beauty in nature, thephrase may be understood as a convenient but inexact formula, aswhen one says the sun rises or the sun sets. Beauty is in thelandscape only in the sense that these material forms express for theartist an idea he has conceived of some aspect of the universal life. The artist is impelled to embody concretely his perception of beauty, and so to communicate his emotion, because the emotion wakenedby the perception of new harmony in things is most fully possessedand enjoyed as it comes to expression. Thus to make real his idealand find the expression of himself is the artist's supreme Happiness. A familiar illustration of the twin need and delight of expressionmay be found in the handiwork produced in the old days when everyartisan was an artist. It may be, perhaps, a key which somecraftsman of Nuremberg fashioned. In the making of it he was notcontent to stop with the key which would unlock the door or thechest It was his key, the work of his hands; and he wrought upon itlovingly, devotedly, and made it beautiful, finding in his work theexpression of his thought or feeling; it was the realization for thatmoment of his ideal. His sense of pleasure in the making of itprompted the care he bestowed upon it; his delight was in creation, in rendering actual a new beau which it was given him to conceive. In its origin as a work of art the key does not differ from a landscapeby Inness, an "arrangement" by Whistler, a portrait by Sargent. Theartist, whether craftsman or painter, is deeply stirred by somepassage in his experience, a fair object or a true thought: it is theimperious demand of his nature, as it is his supreme pleasure, togive his feeling expression. The form which his expression takes--itmay be key or carpet, it may be statue, picture, poem, symphony, orcathedral--is that which most closely responds to his idea, the formwhich most truly manifests and represents it. All art, as the expression of the artist's idea, is in a certain definitesense representative. Not that all art reproduces an external reality, as it is said that painting or literature represents and music does not;but every work of art, in painting, poetry, music, or in the handiworkof the craftsman, _represents_ in that it is the symbol of the creator'sideal. To be sure, the painter or sculptor or dramatist draws hissymbols from already existing material forms, and these symbols arelike objects in a sense in which music is not But line and color andthe life of man, apart from this resemblance to external reality, arerepresentative or symbolic of the artist's idea precisely as thecraftsman's key, the designer's pattern, or the musician's symphony. The beautifully wrought key, the geometric pattern of oriental rug orhanging, the embroidered foliation on priestly vestment, are worksof art equally with the landscape, the statue, the drama, or thesymphony, in that they are one and all the sensuous manifestation ofsome new beauty spiritually conceived. The symbolic character of a work of art must not be lost from sight, for it is the clue to the interpretation of pictures, as it is of all art. The painter feels his way through the gamut of his palette to aharmony of color just as truly as the musician summons the notes ofhis scale and marshals them into accord. The painter is moved bysome sweep of landscape; it wakens in him an emotion. When hesets himself to express his emotion in the special medium withwhich he works, he represents by pigment the external aspect of thelandscape, yes; but not in order to imitate it or reproduce it: herepresents the landscape because the colors and the forms which heregisters upon the canvas express for him the emotions roused bythose colors and those forms in nature. He does not try to match hisgrays with nature's grays, but this nuance which he gropes for on hispalette, and having found it, touches upon his canvas, expresses forhim what that particular gray in nature made him feel. His onecompelling purpose is in all fidelity and singleness of aim to"translate the impression received. " The painter's medium is just assymbolic as the notes of the musician's nocturne or the words of thepoet's sonnet, equally inspired by the hour and place. Color and lineand form, although they happen to be the properties of _things, _have a value for the emotions as truly as musical sounds: they arethe outward symbol of the inward thought or feeling, the visiblebodying forth of the immaterial idea. The symbolic character of the material world is not earlyapprehended. In superficial reaction upon life, men do not readilypass beyond the immediate actuality. That the spiritual meaning ofall things is not perceived, that all things are not seen to be beautiful, or expressive of the supreme harmony, is due to men's limitedpowers of sight and feeling. Therefore is it that the artist is given inorder that he may reveal as yet unrealized spiritual relations, or newbeauty. The workaday world with its burden of exigent "realities"has need of a Carlyle to declare that things are but a wonderfulmetaphor and the physical universe is the garment of the living God. In the realm of thought an Emerson, seer of transcendent vision, must come to restore his fellows to their birthright, which is the lifeof the spirit. As in life, so in art men do not easily pass the obviousand immediate. The child reads "Gulliver's Travels" or "ThePilgrim's Progress" for the story. As his experience of life bothwidens and deepens, he is able to see through externals, and hepenetrates to the real significance, of which the narrative is but thesymbol. So it is with an insight born of experience that the lover ofart sees no longer the "subject, " but the beauty which the subject ismeant to symbolize. In the universal, all-embracing constitution of things, nothing iswithout its significance. To be aware that everything has a meaningis necessary to the understanding of art, as indeed of life itself. Thatmeaning, which things symbolize and express, it cannot be said toooften, is not necessarily to be phrased in words. It is a meaning forthe spirit. A straight line affects one differently from a curve; that is, each kind of line means something. Every line in the face utters thecharacter behind it; every movement of the body is eloquent of theman's whole being. "The expression of the face balks account, " saysWalt Whitman, "But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face, It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists, It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him, The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth, To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more, You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side. " Crimson rouses a feeling different from that roused by yellow, andgray wakens a mood different from either. In considering thissymbolic character of colors it is necessary to distinguish betweentheir value for the emotions and merely literary associations. Thatwhite stands for purity or blue for fidelity is a conventionalized andattached conception. But the pleasure which a man has in somecolors or his dislike for others depends upon the effect each colorhas upon his emotions, and this effect determines for him thesymbolic value of the color. In the same way sounds are symbolic inthat they affect the emotions apart from associated "thoughts. " Evenwith a person who has no technical knowledge of music, the effectof the minor key is unmistakably different from the major. The tonesand modulations of the voice, quite apart from the words uttered, have an emotional value and significance. Everything, line, form, gesture, movement, color, sound, all the material world, isexpressive. All objective forms have their meaning, and rightlyperceived are, in the sense in which the word is used here, beautiful, in that they represent or symbolize a spiritual idea. Thus it is that beauty is not in the object but in man's sense of theobject's symbolic expressiveness. The amateur may be rapt by someartist's "quality of color. " But it is probable that in the act of layingon his pigment, the artist was not thinking of his "quality" at all, but, rapt himself by the perception of the supreme harmony at thatmoment newly revealed to his sense, he was striving sincerely anddirectly to give his feeling its faithfullest expression. His color isbeautiful because his idea was beautiful. The expression is of thevery essence of the thought; it _is_ the thought, but the thoughtembodied. "Coleridge, " says Carlyle, "remarks very pertinentlysomewhere that whenever you find a sentence musically worded, oftrue rhythm and melody in the words, there is something deep andgood in the meaning, too. For body and soul, word and idea, gostrangely together here as everywhere. " Not to look beyond thematerial is to miss the meaning of the work. In an art such as music, in which form and content are one andinextricable, it is not difficult to understand that the medium ofexpression which the art employs is necessarily symbolic, for herethe form cannot exist apart from the meaning to be conveyed. In theart of literature, however, the case is not so clear, for the materialwith which the poet, the novelist, the dramatist works, materialmade up of the facts of the world about us, we are accustomed toregard as objective realities. An incident is an incident, theinevitable issue of precedent circumstances, and that's all there is toit Character is the result of heredity, environment, training, plus theinexplicable _Ego. _ To regard these facts of life which are so actualand immediate as a kind of animate algebraic formulae seemsabsurd, but absurd only as one is unable to penetrate to the innermeaning of things. "Madame Bovary, " to take an example quite atrandom, is called a triumph of realism. Now realism, of all literarymethods, should register the fact as it is, and least of all shouldconcern itself with symbols. But this great novel is more than therecord of one woman's life. Any one who has come to understandthe character and temperament of Flaubert as revealed in his Lettersmust feel that "Madame Bovary" is no arbitrary recital of tragicincident, but those people who move through his pages, what theydo and what goes on about them, expressed for Flaubert his owndreary, baffled rebellion against life. That the artist may consciouslyemploy the facts of life, not for the sake of the fact, but tocommunicate his feeling by thus bodying it forth in concretesymbols, there is explicit testimony. In an essay dealing with hisown method of composition, Poe writes: "I prefer commencing withthe consideration of an _effect. _ Keeping originality _always_ inview . . . I say to myself, in the first place, 'of the innumerableeffects or impressions of which the heart, the intellect, or (moregenerally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the presentoccasion, select?' Having chosen a novel first, and secondly, a vivideffect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident ortone . . . Afterwards looking about me (or rather within) for suchcombinations of event or tone as shall best aid me in theconstruction of the effect. " Yes, physical circumstances, thesuccession of incident, shifting momentary grouping of persons, traits of character in varied combination and contrast, --all these aresignificant for the literary artist of spiritual relations. As the symbol of what the artist feels and strives to express, theindividual work of art is necessarily more than any mere transcriptof fact. It is the meeting and mingling of nature and the spirit of man;the result of their union is fraught with the inheritance of the pastand holds within it the limitless promise of the future. The work ofart is a focus, gathering into itself all the stored experience of theartist, and radiating in turn so much to the beholder as he is able atthe moment to receive. A painter is starting out to sketch. Throughunderbrush and across the open he pushes his way, beset by beautyon every side, and storing impressions, sensations, thoughts. At lasthis eye lights upon some clump of brush, some meadow or hill, which seems at the instant to sum up and express his accumulatedexperience. In rendering this bit of nature, he pours out upon hiscanvas his store of feeling. It is the single case which typifies hisentire course. "The man's whole life preludes the single deed. " Hisway through the world has been just such a gathering up ofexperience, and each new work which he produces is charged withthe collected wealth of years. The special work is the momentary epitome of the artist's totalmeaning. He finds this brief passage in nature beautiful then andthere because it expresses what he feels and means. He does not tryto reproduce the thing, but uses the thing for what it signifies. Thething is but for that moment: it signifies all that has gone before. Ashe watches, a cloud passes over the sun and the face of nature isdarkened. Suddenly the scene bursts into light again. In itself thelandscape is no brighter than before the sun was darkened. Thepainter feels it brighter for the contrast, and inevitably his renderingof its aspect is heightened and intensified. Art is nature heightened and intensified as nature is interpretedthrough the transfiguring medium of the human spirit To the objectis added "The gleam, The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration and the poet's dream. " After an early morning in the fields, Corot withdraws to his house torest. "I dream of the morning landscape, " he writes; "I dream mypicture, and presently I will paint my dream. " But not only does theartist render the beauty which this landscape happens to express forhim: he charges these colors and forms with the beauty of alllandscape. Corot painted _at_ Ville d'Avray; _what_ he paintedwas God's twilight or dawn enwrapping tree and pool. In gratitudeand worship he revealed to men the tender, ineffable poetry of graydawns in all places and for all time. Millet's peasants were calledJohn and Peter and Charles, and they tilled the soil of France; but ontheir bowed shoulders rests the universal burden; these dumb figuresare eloquent of the uncomplaining, hopeless "peasanthood" of theworld. In the actual to discern the ideal, in the appearance topenetrate to the reality, without taking leave of the material to revealthe spiritual, --this is the mystery and vocation of the artist, and hisachievement is art. III THE WORK OF ART AS BEAUTIFUL Just as nature and life are significant as the material manifestation ofspiritual forces and relations, so a work of art is in its turn thesymbol by which the artist communicates himself; it is his revelationto men of the beauty he has perceived and felt. Beauty is not easy to define. That conception which regards beautyas the power to awaken merely agreeable emotions is limited and inso far false. Another source of misunderstanding is the confusion ofbeauty with moralistic values. It is said that beauty is the Ideal; andby many the "Ideal" is taken to mean ideal goodness. Withrighteousness and sin as such beauty has no concern. Much that isevil in life, much that offends against the moral law, must beregarded as beautiful in so far as it plays its necessary part in theuniversal whole. Clearing away these misconceptions, then, anapproximate definition would be that the essence of beauty isharmony. So soon as a detail is shown in its relation to a whole, thenit becomes beautiful because it is expressive of the supreme unity. Adiscord in music is felt to be a discord only as it is isolated; when ittakes its fitting and inevitable place in the large unity of thesymphony, it becomes full of meaning. The hippopotamus, dozingin his tank at the Zoo, is wildly grotesque and ugly. But who shallsay that, seen in the fastnesses of his native rivers, he is not thebeautiful perfect fulfilling of nature's harmony? To a race of blacks, the fair-skinned Apollo appearing among them could not but bemonstrous. The smoking factory, sordid and hideous, is beautiful tohim who sees that it accomplishes a necessary function in the greatscheme of life. Beauty is adaptation. Whatever is truly useful is in sofar truly beautiful. The steam engine and the battleship are beautifuljust as truly as Titian's Madonna, glorified and sweeping upwardinto the presence of God the Father. Only what is vital andserviceable, and whatever is that, is beautiful. When the spirit of man perceives a unity in things, a workingtogether of parts, there beauty exists. It resides in the synthesis ofdetails to the end of shaping a complete whole. This perception, thissynthesis, is a function of the human mind. Beauty is not in thelandscape, but in the intelligence which apprehends it. Evidence ofthis fundamental truth is the fact that the same landscape is more"beautiful" to one man than to another, or to a third, perhaps, is notbeautiful at all. It is only as the individual perceives a relationamong the parts resulting in a total unity that the object becomesbeautiful for him. This abstract exposition may be made clearer by a graphicillustration. Here are four figures composed of the same elements:-- * *** ** * *** * ***** * ****** * ** * * * * * ************* * * * * * ** Fig. I. * * * * * * * ** * * * * * * ** * * * * * * ** * * * * * * ** * * * * * * *Fig. II. Fig. III. Fig. IV. Figure I. , far from being pleasing, is positively disquieting. With theother three figures, the perception of their form is attended with akind of pleasure. Whereas the first figure is without form and ismeaningless, each of the second group exhibits harmony, balance, proportion, interrelation of parts: each is perceived to be a whole. Although experience itself comes to men in fragments andseemingly without order, yet the human mind is so constituted as torequire that an idea or a truth be shown to be a whole before themind can comprehend it In considering the element of balance, itshould be noted, as illustrated by Figure IV. , that balance is notnecessarily perfect symmetry. A Gothic cathedral is beautiful no lessthan a Greek temple. In a painting of a landscape, for example, it isnecessary simply that the masses and the tones stand in balancingrelation; the perfect symmetry of geometric exactness, characteristicof Hellenic and Renaissance art, is not required. In the work whichembodies the artist's perception of the universal harmony, there mustbe rhythm, order, unity in variety; so framed it becomes expressiveand significant As the symbol of beauty, the work of art is itself beautiful in that itmanifests in itself that wholeness and integrity which is beauty. Every work of art is informed by a controlling design; itsubordinates manifold details to a definite whole; it reduces andadjusts its parts to an all-inclusive, perceptible unity. TheNuremberg key must have some sort of rhythm; the rug or vestmentmust exhibit a pattern which can be seen to be a whole; the canvasmust show balance in the composition, and the color must be "intone. " In any work of art there must be design and purpose. In nature there is much which to the limited perception of men doesnot appear to be beautiful, for there is much that does not manifestsuperficially the necessary harmony. The landscape at noondayunder the blaze of the relentless sun discloses many things which areseemingly incongruous with one another. The dull vision of mencannot penetrate to the unity underlying it all. At twilight, as theshadows of evening wrap it round, the same landscape is investedwith mysterious beauty. Conflicting details are lost, harsh outlinesare softened and merged, discordant colors are mellowed andattuned. Nature has brought her field and hill and clustereddwellings into "tone. " So the artist, who has perceived a harmonywhere the common eye saw it not, selects; he suppresses here, strengthens there, fuses, and brings all into unity. Harmony wherever perceived is beauty. Beauty made manifest bythe agency of the human spirit is art. Art, in order to reveal thisharmony to men, must work through selection, through rejection andemphasis, through interpretation. It is not difficult to understand, then, that the exact reproduction of the facts of the external world isnot in a true sense art. The photograph, which is the most exact method of reproducingoutward aspect, is denied the title of a work of art; that is, thephotograph direct, which has not been retouched. To be sure, thephotograph is the product of a mechanical process, and is not, exceptincidentally, the result of human skill. Another kind of reproductionof outward aspect, however, virtually exact, which does show theevidence of human skill, is yet not entitled to rank as art, --theimitative or deceptive picture. Photograph and picture are ruled outequally on the one count. Neither selects. In an exhibition of paintings were once displayed two panelsprecisely similar in appearance, presenting an army coat and cap, asabre and a canteen. At a distance there was no point of difference inthe two. A nearer view disclosed the fact that on one panel theobjects were real and that the other panel was painted. The beholderwas pleased by the exhibition of the painter's skill; but in so far asthe work did not reveal a significance or beauty in these objectswhich the artist had seen and the beholder had not, it fell short ofbeing a work of art Just as the key of the Nuremberg craftsman wasa work of art in that it was for him the expression, the renderingactual, of a new beauty it was given him to conceive, so only that isart which makes manifest a beauty that is new, a beauty that is trulyborn of the artist's own spirit. The repetition of existing forms withno modification by the individual workman is not creation, butimitation; and imitation is manufacture, not art. Inasmuch as the twopanels could not be distinguished, the presentment signified no morethan the reality. Tried as a work of art, the imitative picture, incommon with the photograph, lacks the necessary element ofinterpretation, of revelation. That the representation may become art, there must be added to it some new attribute or quality born of theartist's spirit. The work must take on new meaning. As lending his work significance of an obvious sort, a significancenot necessarily "pictorial, " the painter might see in the objects somestory they have to tell. The plaster of the garret wall where they arehanging he may show to be cracked; that tear in the coat speaks offaithful service, but the coat hangs limp and dusty now; theinscription on the canteen is almost obliterated, and the strap isbroken; the sabre, which shows the marks of stern usage along itsblade, is spotted with rust: the whole composition means TrustyServants in Neglect. By the emphasis of certain aspects he picture ismade to signify more than he mere objects themselves, whereinthere was nothing salient. The meaning is imposed upon them ordrawn out of them by he artist. Or again, the painter may see inthese things the expression for him of a harmony which he canmanifest by the arrangement of line and color, and he so disposes hismaterial as to make that harmony visible. It is, then, not the crudefact which the artist transcribes, but rather some feeling he hastoward the fact. By selection, by adjustment, he gives this specialaspect of the fact emphasis and relief. In virtue of his interpretationthe picture acquires a significance that is new; it gives the beholder apleasure which the fact itself did not give, and thus it passes overinto the domain of art. The purpose of art is not the reproduction of a beautiful object, butthe expression in objective form of a beautiful idea. A plaster cast ofa hand, however comely the hand may be, is not a work of art. Aswith the photograph, the work involves only incidentally theexercise of human skill. But that is not all. In order to render thework in the spirit of art, the sculptor must model, not the hand, buthis sense of the hand; he must draw out and express its character, itssignificance. To him it is not a certain form in bone and flesh; to himit means grace, delicacy, sensitiveness, or perhaps resolution, strength, force. As the material symbol of his idea of the hand, hewill select and make salient such lines and contours as areexpressive to him of that character. Indeed, so little depends upon the exact subject represented and somuch upon the artist's feeling toward it, so much depends upon thespirit of the rendering, that the representation of a subjectuninteresting or even "ugly" in itself may be beautiful. In the art ofliterature, the _subject_ is drawn from the life of man. The materialof the poem, the novel, the drama, is furnished by man's totalexperience, the sum of his sensations, impressions, emotions, andthe events in which he is concerned. But experience crowds in uponhim at every point, without order and without relation; the dailyround of living is for most men a humdrum thing. Yet it is just thisrudimentary and undistinguished mass of experience which istransmuted into literature; by the alchemy of art the representationof that which is without interest becomes interesting. And it happenson this wise. Life is humdrum only in so far as it is meaningless;men can endure any amount drudgery and monotony provided that itlead somewhere, that they perceive its relation to a larger unitywhich is the total of life. As part of a whole which can beapprehended, immediately it acquires purpose and becomessignificant. It is the sense of meaning in life which gives color andwarmth to the march of uniform days. So the literary artist shapeshis inchoate material to a definite end; out of the limitless complexdetails at his command, he selects such passages of background, such incidents, and such traits of character as make for the settingforth of the idea he has conceived. Clearly the artist cannot useeverything, clearly he does not aim to reproduce the fact: there areabridgments and suppressions, as there are accent and emphasis. Thefinished work is a composite, embodying what is essential of many, many preliminary studies and sketches, wrought and compiled withgenerous industry. The master is recognized in what he omits; whatis suppressed is felt but not perceived: the great artist, in the result, steps from peak to peak. "The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the Dark. " Thus with three strokes the master Coleridge depicts the onrush ofthe night over boundless spaces of sky and sea. Within the compassof a few lines, Tennyson registers the interminable, empty monotonyof weary years: "No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts Among the palms and ferns and precipices; The blaze upon the waters to the east; The blaze upon his island overhead; The blaze upon the waters to the west; Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again The scarlet shafts of sunrise--but no sail. " Thus through selection does the artist work to interpretation. Bydetaching the eternal meaning from the momentary fact, byembodying his sense of its significance in such concrete forms assymbolize his idea, by investing the single instance with universallytypical import, then in very truth he represents. Nature is not thesubject of art; she is the universal treasury from whose infinitelyvarious store the artist selects his symbols. A special method in art may here suggest itself as having for itspurpose to reproduce the fact in perfect fidelity; the method is called_realism. _ But a moment's considerate analysis shows that realism isonly a label for one manner of handling, and in the end comes nonearer the object as it "really" is. In its essence realism is the artist'spersonal vision of the fact, exactly as idealism or romanticism orimpressionism is personal. For after all, what is the reality? Achance newsboy is offering his papers on a crowded street corner. The fine lady recoils from his filth and from all contact with him;the philanthropist sees in him a human being to help and to redeem;the philosopher regards him dispassionately as a "social factor, " theresult of heredity and environment; the artist cries out in joy as hiseye lights upon good stuff to paint. But all the while, which of theseconceptions figures the "real" newsboy? Not one. For he is all thesetogether; and the single observer, whatever his bias, cannotapprehend him at every point. Any attempt to represent him involvesselection and interpretation, the suppression of some traits in orderto emphasize others, which are the special aspects that haveimpressed the given observer. So there is no essential realism. Theterm applies to the method of those who choose to render what isless comforting in life, who insist on those characteristics of thingswhich men call ugly. In realism, just as truly as in any other kind oftreatment, is expressed the personality of the artist, his own peculiarway of envisaging the world. A work of art is born of the artist's desire to express his joy in somenew aspect of the universal harmony which has been disclosed tohim. The mission of art is through interpretation to reveal. Ithappens sometimes that a visitor at an exhibition of paintings isshocked by a picture which seems to him for the moment impossible, because so far beyond the range of his experience; yet withal hefinds himself attracted by it and he returns to study it. It is not manydays before his glance is arrested by that very effect in nature, andhe says, "Why, that is like that picture!" It was the artist who firstsaw it and who taught him to see it for himself. When one observesan effect in nature or in life that one calls "a Corot" or "a Whistler, "one means that to Corot or to Whistler is due the glory ofdiscovering that fuller beauty and revealing it. Browning makes FraLippo Lippi say: "We're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted--better to us, Which is the same thing. Art was given for that. " This revealing power of art is not restricted to the individualappreciator. It is said that the French are an artistic people and thatAmericans are not. The explanation is that for generations the artistsof France have been discovering to their countrymen the beauty thatis around them at their very door, and have taught them to appreciateit. The Americans will be an artistic people when our artists shallhave done the like for us. When there shall have been forgenerations a truly native American art, there will be a public tounderstand and to appreciate. So it is that everywhere the highfunction of art is to reveal. As a friend, more sensitive and moreenthusiastic, with whom we are strolling, points out to us manybeauties by the wayside or in trees and sky, so the artist takes us bythe hand and leads us out into life, indicating for us a harmony towhich we were blind before. Burdened with affairs and the dailyround, we had not thought to look off and out to the spreadingmeadows tossing into hills which roll upward into the blue heavenbeyond. The beauty thus revealed is a beauty which the artist hasapprehended in spirit and which he would make actual. A work ofart is the expression of an aspiration. The crude and tawdry imagesof the Madonna Set in the roadside cross are just as truly a work ofart as the rapt saints of Giotto or the perfect Madonnas of Raphael inso far as they are expressive of what those poor, devout souls whofashioned them felt of worship and of love. After all, the differenceis that Giotto felt more than they, Raphael was endowed with moreaccomplished powers of expression. The work receives its import asit is the faithful utterance of him who shaped it, as it is genuinely therealization of his ideal. "The gift without the giver is bare. " But it isno less true that the gift without the receiver is sterile and void, forart involves not only its creator's intention but also its message tohim whom the work reaches. In a book, it is not only what the writersays that makes its significance but also what the reader thinks as hereads. In so far as any man finds in picture or poem or song a newbeauty, a fuller sense of harmony than was his before, for him that isa work of art. Thus the standard by which art is to be tried is relative. For itscreator, the work is art in that it embodies a perception of newharmony that is peculiarly his. In the material result, this specialcharacter is imparted to the work by the artist's instinctive selection. No two painters, though equipped with equal technical skill andperhaps of like tastes and preferences, would or indeed could renderthe same sweep of landscape in precisely similar fashion. Obviously, to set down everything were at once an impossibility and an untruth, for the detail of nature is infinite and the beholder does not seeeverything. Each is bound to select such details as impress him, andhis selection will be determined by the way in which he as a uniquepersonality, an individual different from every other man in thewhole wide universe, feels about the bit of nature before him. Inexpressing by his special medium what he feels about the landscape, he aims, in the selection of material form and color, to detach andrender visible what of essential truth the landscape means to him, topurge it of accidents, and register its eternal beauty. The painter willnot attempt, then, to reproduce the physical facts of nature, --thetopography, geology, botany, of the landscape, --but rather throughthose facts in terms of color and form he tries to render its_expression:_ its quality, as brilliance, tenderness; its mood, as joy, mystery, setting down those salient aspects of it which combine togive it character and meaning. For landscape--to recall theexposition of a preceding page--has its expression as truly as thehuman face. A man knows his friends not by the shape of the noseor the color of the eyes, but by the character which these featuresexpress, the personality which shines in the face and radiates from itThis effluence of the soul within is the essential man; people call itthe "expression. " As with human life, so with the many aspects ofnature. External traits are merged in the spiritual meaning. Thematerial forms have the power of affecting the spirit thus or so; andin man's reaction on his universe they come to take on a symbolicemotional significance. Each manifestation of nature arouses in theartist, more or less consciously on his part, some feeling toward it:he cares, then, to represent these external material forms, whether aflower, a landscape, a human face, only because there is in themsomething in which he delights; he fashions the work of art in praiseof the thing he loves. To the clever technician who imitatively paintsthe flower as he knows it to be, "A primrose on the river's brim A yellow primrose is to him And it is nothing more. " But to the artist "The meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. " And it is these thoughts that he cares to express and not the visibletruth about the flower. A writer was walking along the streets ofParis on a day in early March. "It was dark and rather cold. I was gloomy, and walked because Ihad nothing to do. I passed by some flowers placed breast-high upona wall. A jonquil in bloom was there. It is the strongest expression ofdesire: it was the first perfume of the year. I felt all the happinessdestined for man. This unutterable harmony of souls, the phantom ofthe ideal world, arose in me complete. I never felt anything so greator so instantaneous. I know not what shape, what analogy, whatsecret of relation it was that made me see in this flower a limitlessbeauty. . . . I shall never enclose in a conception this power, thisimmensity that nothing will express; this form that nothing willcontain; this ideal of a better world which one feels, but which itwould seem that nature has not made. " And if Sénancour had set himself to paint his jonquil as he haswritten about it, how that tender flower would have beentransfigured and glorified! What the artist aims to render is not the rose but the beauty of therose, his sense of one chord in the universal harmony which the rosesounds for him, not that only, but the beauty of all roses that everwere or ever shall be; and inevitably he will select such colors andsuch lines as bring that special and interpreted beauty into relief, andso make manifest to the beholder what was revealed to his ownhigher vision, by virtue of which, and not because of anyexceptional technical skill, he is an artist. IV ART AND APPRECIATION It may be that some reader of the foregoing pages will attempt toapply the principles therein set forth to the pictures shown in thenext exhibition he happens to attend. It is more than probable that inhis first efforts he will be disappointed. For the principles discussedhave dealt with art in its authentic manifestations; and not everypainter is an artist, not every picture is a work of art. At the very outset it should be said that an exhibition of paintings asordinarily made up is confusing and wholly illogical. We maysuppose that a volume to be read through in one sitting of two hoursis placed in the hands of an intelligent reader. The book consists ofessays, poems, short stories, and dramatic dialogue, each within thecompass of a few pages, each contributed by a different writer as anexample of his work for the year. We may suppose now that thereader is asked to gather from this volume, read hastily and eithersuperficially or in random bits, some idea of the significance of eachauthor and of the import and scope of contemporary Americanliterature. Is it a fair test? This volume, we may further suppose, ispractically the only means by which the writer can get his workbefore the public. A public means a purchaser, and of course thewriter must live. Is it reasonable to think that every numbercontributed to such a volume will be a work of art, wrought withsingleness of heart and in loving devotion to an ideal? There are stillwith us those who "work for money" and those who "work forfame. " There are those who believe in "giving the public what itwants, " and the numbers they contribute to the yearly volumes aresamples of the sort of thing they do, from which the public mayorder. In the table of contents stand celebrated names; and to thework of such men, perhaps, will turn the seeker after what he thinksought to be the best, not realizing that these are the men who haveknown how to "give the people what they want, " that the people donot always want the good and right thing, and that it is somewhat thehabit of genius to dispense with contemporary recognition. If thereis here or there in the book an essay or a poem the product ofthought and effort and offered in all seriousness, how little chance ithas of being appreciated, except by a few, even if it is remarked atall in the jumble of miscellaneous contributions. This hypothetical volume is a fair parallel of an annual exhibition ofpaintings. In such an exhibition the number of works of art, the true, inevitable expression of a new message, is relatively small. Themost celebrated and most popular painters are not necessarily bythat fact great artists, or indeed artists at all. Contemporary judgmentis notoriously liable to go astray. The gods of one generation areoften the laughing stock of the next; the idols of the fathers are torndown and trampled under foot by the children. Some spirits therehave been of liberal promise who have not been able to withstandthe demands made upon them by early popular approval. Such is thestruggle and soul's tragedy which is studied convincingly in Mr. Zangwill's novel, "The Master. " No assault on the artist's integrity isso insidious as immediate favor, which in its turn begets the fataldesire to please. To the "successful" painters, however, are for the most part accordedthe places of honor on academy walls. The canvases of these menare seen first by the visitor; but they are not all. There are otherpictures which promise neither better nor worse. Here are paintingsof merit, good in color and good in drawing, but empty of anymeaning. Scattered through the exhibition are the works of a groupof able men, imitating themselves, each trying to outdo the others bya display of cleverness in solving some "painter's problem" or bysome startling effect of subject or handling. But it is a sad day forany artist when he ceases to find his impulse and inspiration eitherin his own spirit or in nature, and when he looks to his fellowcraftsmen for the motive of his work. Again, there are pictures bymen who, equipped with adequate technical skill, have caught themanner of a master, and mistaking the manner for the message itwas simply intended to express, they degrade it into a mannerismand turn out a product which people do not distinguish from theauthentic utterances of the master. The artist is a seer and prophet, the channel of divine influences: the individual painter, sculptor, writer, is a very human being. As he looks over these walls, clamorous of the commonplace andthe commercial, the seeker after what is good and true in art realizeshow very few of these pictures have been rendered in the spirit oflove and joy. The painter has one eye on his object and one eye onthe public; and too often, as a distinguished actor once said of thestage manager whose vision is divided between art and the boxoffice, the painter is a one-eyed man. A painter once refused to find anything to interest him, still less tomove him, in a silent street with a noble spire detaching itselfvaguely from the luminous blue depths of a midnight sky, because, he said, "People won't buy dark things, so what's the use? You mightas well do bright, pretty things that they will buy, and that are just aseasy to make. " A portrait-painter gives up landscape subjectsbecause, as he does not hesitate to declare, it hurts his business. Andthe painters themselves are not altogether to blame for this attitudetowards their work. The fault lies half with the people who buypictures, having the money, and who have not a gleam ofunderstanding of the meaning of art. A woman who had ordered herhouse to be furnished and decorated expensively, remarkedto a caller who commented on a water-color hanging in thedrawing-room: "Yes, I think it matches the wall-paper very nicely. " Whensuch is the purpose of those who paint pictures and such is theunderstanding of those who buy them, it is not surprising that notevery picture is inevitably a work of art. But what is the poor seeker after art to do? The case is by no meanshopeless. In current exhibitions a few canvases strike a new note;and by senses delicately attuned this note can be distinguishedwithin the jangle of far louder and popular tunes ground out, as itwere, by the street-piano. Seriously to study contemporary painting, however, the logical opportunity is furnished by the exhibitions ofthe works of single men or of small groups. As the reader whowishes to understand an author or perhaps a school does not contenthimself with random extracts, but instead isolates the man for themoment and reads his work consecutively and one book in itsrelation to his others; so the student of pictures can appreciate thework and understand the significance of a given painter only as hesees a number of his canvases together and in relation. So, he is ableto gather something of the man's total meaning. Widely different from annual exhibitions, too, are galleries andmuseums; for here the proportion of really good things isimmeasurably larger. In the study of masterpieces, it need hardly besaid, the amateur may exercise judgment and moderation. He shouldnot try to do too much at one time, for he can truly appreciate onlyas he enters fully into the spirit of the work and allows it to possesshim. To achieve this sympathy and understanding within the samehour for more than a very few great works is manifestly impossible. Such appreciation involves fundamentally a quick sensitiveness tothe appeal and the variously expressive power of color and line andform. To win from the picture its fullest meaning, the observer maybring to bear some knowledge of the artist who produced it and ofthe age and conditions in which he lived. But in the end he mustsurrender himself to the work of art, bringing to it his intellectualequipment, his store of sensuous and emotional experience, hisentire power of being moved. For when all is said, there is no single invariable standard by whichto try a work of art: its significance to the appreciator rests upon hiscapacity at the moment to receive it. "A jest's prosperity lies in theear of him that hears it. " The appreciator need simply ask himself, "What has this work to reveal to me of beauty that I have notperceived for myself? I shall not look for the pretty and theagreeable. But what of new significance, energy, life, has this workto express to me? I will accept no man entirely and unquestioningly, I will condemn no one unheard. No man has the whole truth; everyman has some measure of the truth, however small. Let it be my taskto find it and to separate it from what is unessential and false. In mysearch for what is true, I will conserve my integrity and maintain myindependence. And I shall recognize my own wherever I may findit. " "Man is the measure of all things, " declared an ancient philosopher. And his teaching has not been superseded to-day. The individual isthe creator of his own universe; he is the focus of the currents andforces of his world. The meaning of all things is subjective. So themeasure of beauty in life for a man is determined by his capacity toreceive and understand. Thus it is that a man's joy in experience andhis appreciation of art in any of its manifestations are conditioned bythe opportunity that nature or art furnishes for his spirit to exerciseitself. In the reading of poetry, for example, we seek the expressionof ourselves. Our first emotion is, perhaps, a simple, unreflectingdelight, the delight which a butterfly must feel among the flowers orthat of a child playing in the fields under the warm sun; it is adelight wholly physical, --pure sensation. A quick taking of thebreath, the escape of a sigh, inarticulate and uncritical, are the onlyexpression we can find at that instant for what we feel: as when anabrupt turn of the road spreads out before us a landscape of whichwe had not dreamed, or we enter for the first time the presence ofthe Apollo Belvedere. We know simply that we are pleased. Butafter nerves have ceased to tingle so acutely, we begin to think; andwe seek to give account to ourselves of the beauty which for themoment we could but feel. Once arrived at the attitude of reflection, we find that the poetry which affects us most and to which weoftenest return is the poetry that contains the record of our ownexperience, but heightened, the poetry which expresses our desiresand aspirations, that in which we recognize ourselves elevated andidealized. In so far as we see in it the ennobled image of our ownnature, so far it has power to hold us and to stir us. An elementary manifestation of the tendency to seek in art therecord of our own experience is seen in the popularity of thosepictures whose subjects are familiar and can be immediatelyrecognized. On a studio wall was once hanging a "Study of Brush, "showing the play of sunlight through quivering leaves. A visitorasked the painter why he did not put some chickens in theforeground. To her the canvas was meaningless, for she had neverseen, had never really seen, the sunlight dancing on burnished leaves. The chickens, which she had seen and could recognize, were theelement of the familiar she required in order to find any significancein the picture. This tendency, of which the demand for chickens is a rudimentarymanifestation, is the basis of all appreciation. The artist's revelationof the import of life we can receive and understand only as we havefelt a little of that import for ourselves. Color is meaningless to ablind man, music does not exist for the deaf. To him who has neveropened his eyes to behold the beauty of field and hill and trees andsky, to him whose spirit has not dimly apprehended something ofthat eternal significance of which these things are the materialvisible bodying forth, to such a the work of the master is only somuch paint and canvas. The task of the appreciator, then, is todevelop his capacity to receive and enjoy. That capacity is to be trained by the exercise of itself. Each newharmony which he is enabled to perceive intensifies his power tofeel and widens the range of his vision. The more beauty heapprehends in the world, so much the more of universal forces hebrings into unity with his own personality. By this extension of hisspirit he reaches out and becomes merged in the all-embracing life. If the conception be true that a supreme unity, linking all seeminglychaotic details, ultimately brings them into order, and that this unity, which is spiritual, penetrates every atom of matter, fusing everythingand making all things one; then the appreciator will realize that thesignificance of art is for the spirit The beauty which the artist revealsis but the harmony which underlies the universal order; and he in histurn must apprehend that beauty spiritually. From this truth it follows that the condition of aesthetic enjoyment, or in other words the appreciation of beauty, is detachment of spiritand remoteness from practical consequences. The classic illustrationof the truth is the saying of Lucretius, that it is sublime to stand onthe shore and behold a shipwreck. It is sublime only as one'spersonal interests and feelings are not engaged. It would not besublime if it were possible for the spectator to aid in averting thecatastrophe; it would not be sublime if one's friends were aboard theship. One is able to appreciate beauty only as one is able to detachone's self from what is immediate and practical, and by virtue of thisdetachment, to apprehend the spiritual significance. The sublimity ofthe shipwreck lies in what it expresses of the impersonal might ofelemental forces and man's impotence in the struggle against nature. That sublimity, which is one manifestation of beauty, is of the spirit, and by the spirit it must be apprehended. To illustrate this truth by a few homely examples. A farmer lookingout on his fields of tossing wheat, drenched in golden sunlight, exclaims, "Look, isn't that beautiful!" What he really means is: "Seethere the promise of a rich harvest, and it is mine. " If the fieldsbelonged to his neighbor, his feelings towards them would be quitedifferent. No, their _beauty_ is to be seen and felt only by himwhose mind is free of thoughts of personal enrichment and who thuscan perceive the harmony with life of golden sunshine and nature'sabundant gifts. The farmer could not see beyond the material and itsvalue to him as material. But beauty lies deeper than that, for it isthe expression of spiritual relations. Two men are riding together in a railway carriage. As the traindraws into a city, they pass a little group of tumble-down houses, brown and gray, a heap of corners thrown together. One man thinks:"What dreary lives these people must lead who dwell there. " Theother, with no such stirring of the sympathy, sees a wonderful"scheme" in grays and browns, or an expressive composition orordering of line. Neither could think the thoughts of the other at thesame time with his own. One feels a practical and physical reaction, and he cannot therefore at that moment penetrate to the meaning ofthese things for the spirit; and that meaning is the harmony whichthey express. From the tangle of daily living with its conflict of interests and itsburden of practical needs, the appreciator turns to art with its powerto chasten and to tranquillize. In art, he finds the revelation in fullermeasure of a beauty which he has felt but vaguely. He realizes thatunderlying the external chaos of immediate practical experiencerests a supreme and satisfying order. Of that order he can here andnow perceive but little, hemmed in as he is by the material world, whose meaning he discerns as through a glass, darkly. Yet he keepsresolutely on his way, secure in his kinship with the eternal spirit, and rewarded by momentary glimpses of the "broken arcs" which heknows will in the end take their appointed places in the "perfectround. " V THE ARTIST Out of chaos, order. Man's life on the earth is finite and fragmentary, but it is the constant effort of his spirit to bring the scattering detailsof momentary experience into an enduring harmony with hispersonality and with that supreme unity of which he is a part. The man who out of the complex disarray of his little world effects anew harmony is an artist. He who fashioned the first cup, shaping itaccording to his ideal, --for no prototype existed, --and in response tohis needs; he who, taking this elementary form, wrought upon itwith his fingers and embellished it according to his ideal and inresponse to his need of expressing himself; he, again, who out of thesame need for expression adds to the cup anything new: each ofthese workmen is an artist. The reproduction of already existingforms, with no modification by the individual workman, is not art. So, for example, only that painter is an artist who adds to hisrepresentation of the visible world some new attribute or qualityborn of his own spirit Primitive artisan, craftsman, painter, eachcreates in that he reveals and makes actual some part, which beforewas but potential, of the all-embracing life. As the artist, then, wins new reaches of experience and brings theminto unity, he reveals new beauty, new to men yet world-old. For theharmony which he effects is new only in the sense that it was notbefore perceived. As, in the physical universe, not an atom of matterthrough the ages is created or destroyed, so the supreme spiritual lifeis constant in its sum and complete. Of this life individuals partakein varying measure; their growth is determined by how much of itthey make their own. The growth of the soul in this sense is notdifferent from man's experience of the physical world. The child isborn: he grows up into his family; the circle widens to includeneighbors and the community; the circle widens again as the boygoes away to school and then to college. With ever-widening sweepthe outermost bound recedes, though still embracing him, as hereaches out to Europe and at length compasses the earth, conqueringexperience and bringing its treasures into tribute to his own spirit. The things were there; but for the boy each was in turn created as hemade it his own. So the artist, revealing new aspects of the supremeunity, creates in the sense that he makes possible for his fellows afuller taking-up of this life into themselves. It may be said that he is the greatest artist who has felt the most ofharmony in life, --the greatest artist but potentially. The beauty hehas perceived must in accordance with our human needs findexpression concretely, because it is only as he manifests himself informs which we can understand that we are able to recognize him. Though a mute, inglorious Milton were Milton still, yet our humanlimitations demand his utterance that we may know him. So theartist accomplishes his mission when he communicates himself. Thehuman spirit is able to bring the supreme life into unity with itselfaccording to the measure of its own growth made possible throughexpression. The supreme life, of which every created thing partakes, --the stone, the flower, the animal, and man, --is beauty, because it is thesupreme harmony wherein everything has its place in relation toevery other thing. This central unity has its existence in expression. The round earth, broken off from the stellar system and whirlingalong its little orbit through space, is yet ever in communicationwith the great system; the tree, with its roots in the earth, puts forthbranches, the branches expand into twigs, the twigs burst into leaveswhose veins reach out into the air; out of the twigs spring budsswelling into blossoms, the blossoms ripen into fruit, the fruit dropsseed into the earth which gave it and springs up into new trees. Thetree by its growth, which is the putting forth of itself or expression, develops needs, these needs are satisfied, and the satisfying of theneeds is the condition of its continued expansion. Man, too, has his existence in expression. By growth throughexpression, which is the creation of a new need, he is enabled to takeup more into himself; he brings more into the unity of hispersonality, and thus he expands into the universal harmony. The unity which underlies the cosmos--to define once more theconception which is the basis of the preceding chapters--is of thespirit. The material world which we see and touch is but the symboland bodying forth of spiritual relations. The tranquillizing, satisfyingpower of art is due to the revelation which art accomplishes of aspiritual harmony which transcends the seeming chaos of instantexperience. So it comes about that harmony, or beauty, which is ofthe spirit, is apprehended by the spirit. That faculty in the artist bywhich he is able to perceive beauty is called _temperament. _ Bytemperament is to be understood the receptive faculty, the power tofeel, the capacity for sensations, emotions, and "such intellectualapprehensions as, in strength and directness and their immediatelyrealized values at the bar of an actual experience, are most likesensations. " The function of temperament is to receive and totransmit, to interpret, to create in the sense that it reveals. In theresult it is felt to be present only as the medium through which theforces behind it come to expression. Art, the human spirit, temperament, --these terms are general andabstract. Now the abstract to be realized must be made concrete. Justas art, in order to be manifest, must be embodied in the particularwork, as the statue, the picture, the building, the drama, thesymphony, so the human spirit becomes operative in the person ofthe individual, and temperament may be best studied in the characterof the individual artist. As temperament is the receptive faculty, the artist's attitude towardlife is what Wordsworth called "wise passiveness, "--Wordsworth, the poet of "impassioned contemplation. " Keats, too, --and amongthe poets, whose vision of beauty was more beautiful, whose graspon the truth more true?--characterizes himself as "addicted topassiveness. " It is of temperament that Keats is writing when he saysin a letter: "That quality which goes to form a man of achievement, especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed soenormously, is _Negative Capability_ . " In another letter he writes:-- "It has been an old comparison for our urging on--the Beehive;however, it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than theBee--for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving thangiving--no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. Theflower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee--its leavesblush deeper in the next spring--and who shall say between Man andWoman which is the most delighted? Now it is more noble to sit likeJove than to fly like Mercury--let us not therefore go hurrying aboutand collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there impatientlyfrom a knowledge of what is to be aimed at; but let us open ourleaves like a flower and be passive and receptive--budding patientlyunder the eye of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insectthat favours us with a visit--sap will be given us for meat and dewfor drink. . . . "O fret not after knowledge--I have none, And yet my song comes native with the warmth. O fret not after knowledge--I have none, And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens At thought of idleness cannot be idle, And he's awake who thinks himself asleep. " Still again he says: "The Genius of Poetry must work out its ownsalvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept, but bysensation and watchfulness in itself. That which is creative mustcreate itself. " A nature so constituted, a nature receptive and passive, isnecessarily withdrawn from practical affairs. To revert to Keats asan example, for Keats is so wholly the artist, it is his remotenessfrom the daily life about him that makes him the man of no onecountry or time. His poetry has a kind of universality, butuniversality within a definite sphere, and that sphere is the world ofthings lovely and fair. In a playful mood Keats writes to his sister:"Give me Books, fruit, French wine and fine weather and a littlemusic out of doors, played by somebody I do not know . . . And I canpass a summer very quietly without caring much about Fat Louis, fatRegent or the Duke of Wellington. " These are trivial words; but theyserve to define in some measure the artistic temperament. For this characteristic remoteness from affairs the artist is sometimesreproached by those who pin their faith to material things. Such arenot aware that for the artist the only reality is the life of the spirit. The artist, as Carlyle says of the Man of Letters, "lives in the inwardsphere of things, in the True, Divine and Eternal, which existsalways, unseen to most, under the Temporary, Trivial: his being is inthat. " Temperament constitutes the whole moral nature of the artist. "With a great poet, " says Keats, "the sense of beauty overcomesevery consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. " It is thestandard which measures the worth of any act. It is conscience, too;for the functions performed by conscience in the normal moral lifeof the man of action are fulfilled by the artist's devotion to his ideal;his service to his art is his sole and sufficient obligation. And where the man of action looks to find his rewards in theapproval of his fellow men, the artist cares to please himself. Thevery act of expressing is itself the joy and the reward. To this truthKeats again stands as witness: "I feel assured, " he says, "I shouldwrite from the mere yearning and fondness I have for the beautiful, even if my night's labours should be burnt every Morning and noeye ever shine upon them. " And still again: "I value more theprivilege of seeing great things in loneliness than the fame of aprophet. " Not that the artist does not crave appreciation. Hismessage fails of completeness if there is no ear to hear it, if it doesnot meet a sympathy which understands. But the true artist removesall shadow of petty vanity and becomes, in Whitman's phrase, "thefree channel of himself. " He is but the medium through whom thespirit of beauty reveals itself; in thankfulness and praise he butreceives and transmits. That it is given him to see beauty and tointerpret it is enough. It is by virtue of his power to feel that the artist is able to apprehendbeauty; his temperament is ever responsive to new harmonies. Byforce of his imagination, which is one function of his temperament, he sends his spirit into other lives, absorbs their experience andmakes it his own, and ultimately identifies himself with world forcesand becomes creator. In a lyric passage in a letter Keats exclaims:-- "The mighty abstract Idea I have of Beauty in all things stifles themore divided and minute domestic happiness. . . . I feel more andmore every day, as my imagination strengthens, that I do not live inthis world alone, but in a thousand worlds. No sooner am I alonethan shapes of epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve mySpirit the office which is equivalent to a King's body-guard--then'Tragedy with sceptered pall comes sweeping by. ' According to mystate of mind I am with Achilles shouting in the Trenches, or withTheocritus in the Vales of Sicily. Or I throw my whole being intoTroilus, and repeating those lines, 'I wander like a lost soul upon theStygian Banks staying for waftage, ' I melt into the air with avoluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone. " This power to penetrate and to identify was exercised with peculiardirectness and plenitude by Walt Whitman, prophet of theomnipotence of man. To find the burden of his message formulatedin the single phrase one may turn to his Poems quite at random. "My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth. " "I inhale great draughts of space, -- The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine. . . . . . All seems beautiful to me. " Of the artist may be affirmed what Whitman affirms of theAnswerer:-- "Every existence has its idiom, every thing has an idiom and tongue, He resolves all tongues into his own and bestows it upon men, and any man translates, and any man translates himself also, One part does not counteract another part, he is the joiner, he sees how they join. " As the artist sends out his spirit through the world, as he becomesthe channel of universal and divine influences, so he is admitted tonew and ever new revelations of beauty. And stirred by the gloriousvision, he brings that beauty to earth, communicating it to hisfellows and making them partakers of it, as he gives his feelingexpression. Thus finding utterance as the prophet of God, heconsummates his mission and takes his place in the world order. Herein he has his being, for life is expression; and each newharmony which he makes manifest is the medium of his fulleridentification with the universal life. So it is that the artist is the supreme interpreter, the mediatorbetween man and beauty. His work is a work of joy, of gratitude, ofworship. He is the happy servant of God, His prophet, throughwhom He declares Himself to the children of men.